Information technology provides initiatives for a ‘smarter’ world which is increasingly instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. Instrumented applications and middleware, for example, in an education domain, collect and process user-content interaction data. The availability and growing popularity of rich, multi-media learning content (e.g., videos, games, simulations) and sophisticated interfaces (e.g., smart phones, tablets) promote high interaction. A single user learning session can potentially generate thousands of interaction events of different types.
Such events are generally first stored locally (e.g., in a user device such as a phone or tablet) and then periodically sent over to a server where the data can be persisted and made available to consuming applications for analysis. For example, Cloudant™ provides application programming interface (API) support for disconnected use and server synchronization; this is leveraged within Student Activity Information (SAI) Hub™ and the mEduPAL™ application. Cloudant™, is a product from International Business Machines Corporation (IBM®) Armonk, N.Y.
Student Activity Information (SAI) Hub and mEduPAL refer to two assets developed in IBM® to support both the storage and collection of dynamic user interactions from a blended learning environment.
Existing solutions assume availability of connectivity to continuously capture and transmit data to back-end systems. In the case of resource-constraints, they terminate data collection or halt the system/device operation. Thus, in resource constrained environments, this approach can pose challenges because in such environments, intermittent or lack of network connectivity prevents data from being updated regularly to the server and limited storage capabilities on the device do not allow all of the data to be saved. Such situations are common in emerging markets. It is common now for learners to have access to tablets (e.g., procured by themselves or donated by government or other organizations), which may come with pre-loaded content or applications, or may be loaded at educational institutions. However learners may only have intermittent network or internet connectivity, and sometimes not have connectivity for extended periods of time.
As a result, as learning proceeds in resource-constrained scenarios, user interaction data will not be stored beyond a point. Instrumented applications will have to stop collecting new data, or will delete existing data. Such missing data can lead to valuable user and content insights to be lost.